Reliability Enhancement of the Diverse Protection System Regarding Common Cause Failures

The issue of CCF （common cause failure） in digital I ＆ C （instrumentation and control） systems is of great interest because an increasing number of such systems are implemented in nuclear power plants. For the mitigation of ATWS （anticipated transients without scram） as well as CCF within the PPS （plant protection system） and the ESF-CCS （engineered safety feature-component control system）, the ADPS （advanced diverse protection system） has been developed by KEPCO E ＆ C （KEPCO Engineering and Construction） Company for new nuclear units in Korea. As compared to the DPS （diverse protection system） design of APR1400, the ADPS has a diverse safety injection function considering a LBLOCA （large break loss of coolant accident） concurrent with the CCF of the PPS and ESF-CCS. Besides the function of SIAS （safety injection actuation signal） initiation, several CCF avoidance features, such as the changes of software design classification, communication methods, equipment platform, and man-machine interfaces, are introduced to enhance the reliability of the ADPS. In addition, the ADPS has recently incorporated four redundant channels with 2-out-of-4 voting logics to enhance its fault tolerant capability. Therefore, it is expected that the ADPS can provide an enhanced reliability regarding possible CCFs in the safety-grade digital I ＆ C systems as well as the ADPS itself.     

Fault Detection and Isolation for Low Hardware Redundancy Flight Control System

The problems of current highly redundant flight control system are analyzed in this paper. Our study gives methods of utilizing other information to reduce physical components on the condition of meeting the reliability requirements for flight control system. The strategies presented in this paper mainly include information redundancy, multi-thread, time redundancy, geometry space redundancy, etc.. Analysis and simulation show these non-hardware based methods can reduce the requirement of system hardware level and thus reduce the system complexity, weight, space, costs and R＆D （research and development） time.     

A Novel Approach to Utilize DSM ＆ Smart Grid Initiatives for Power System Operations

This paper presents in detail the idea to utilize the advent of smart grid technologies and DSM （demand side management）, to ease the operational requirements of power system operations. Utilization of DSM and smart grids, to control load rather than generations, is explored. Usually, system security is attained through preventive measures, the system is maintained and prepared in advance to survive credible outages through ＂reserve management＂, for which requirements are specified as security standards in grid codes. However, with the utilization of DSM techniques on transmission level such as ＂direct control load＂, ＂responsive load＂, and interruptible load control, system operations can be shifted towards ＂corrective＂ mode keeping intact the system security.     

Numerical simulations and analyses of temperature control loop heat pipe for space CCD camera

As one of the key units of space CCD camera,the temperature range and stability of CCD components affect the image's indexes.Reasonable thermal design and robust thermal control devices are needed.One kind of temperature control loop heat pipe(TCLHP) is designed,which highly meets the thermal control requirements of CCD components.In order to study the dynamic behaviors of heat and mass transfer of TCLHP,particularly in the orbital flight case,a transient numerical model is developed by using the well-established empirical correlations for flow models within three dimensional thermal modeling.The temperature control principle and details of mathematical model are presented.The model is used to study operating state,flow and heat characteristics based upon the analyses of variations of temperature,pressure and quality under different operating modes and external heat flux variations.The results indicate that TCLHP can satisfy the thermal control requirements of CCD components well,and always ensure good temperature stability and uniformity.By comparison between flight data and simulated results,it is found that the model is to be accurate to within 1℃.The model can be better used for predicting and understanding the transient performance of TCLHP.     

Testing PV Central Inverters＇ Compliance with International Grid Codes

In many electrical grids worldwide, the rising amount of installed PV （photovoltaic） power entails a considerable influence of PV systems on grid quality and stability. Consequently, in the wake of the revised German medium voltage directives issued in 2009, new requirements for PV inverters have been established internationally. At Fraunhofer ISE＇s Inverter Laboratory, approximately 25 large PV inverters with a nominal power of up to 880 kVA have been characterized in the past three years. In this period, the focus of many inverter manufacturers has begun to shift from traditional European markets towards an international perspective. Therefore, experiences with numerous different grid codes have been gained by our team. This work summarizes the similarities and differences between these grid codes. Additionally, several requirements that have proved to be critical will be examined. Finally, the adequacy of these grid codes to guarantee the safe and reliable operation of electrical grids is discussed.     

Experiment Investigation and Control Strategies on Two-Phase Refrigerant Injection Heat Pump System for Electric Vehicle in Start-up Stage

Due to the poor heating performance and operating safety in low ambient temperature, traditional Air Source Heat Pump(ASHP) for Electric Vehicles(EVs) has many limits in cold region, which can be solved by the ASHP with refrigerant injection. During the start-up stage of EV in winter, the inlet air temperature of the in-car condenser is the same as the ambient temperature. At this situation, the performance and control strategy of the heat pump require special attention. In the present study, a series of experiments were carried out on the heating performance of the Refrigerant Injection Heat Pump(RIHP) system in start-up stage of EV, at the ambient temperature from –20°C to –5°C. The effects of compressor speed and injected refrigerant state on the heating performance of the system were discussed in depth. According to the results, the control strategies during start-up stage have been discussed in the end of the article. The study provides a practical control strategy for the RIHP system during the start-up stage of electric vehicles, helping to efficiently operate electric vehicles in cold regions.     

Investigation on Active Thermal Control Method with Pool Boiling Heat Transfer at Low Pressure

In order to maintain a desirable temperature level of electronic equipment at low pressure, the thermal control performance with pool boiling heat transfer of water was examined based on experimental measurement. The total setup was designed and performed to accomplish the experiment with the pressure range from 4.5 kPa to 20 kPa and the heat flux between 6 kW/m~2 and 20 kW/m~2. The chosen material of the heat surface was aluminium alloy and the test cavity had the capability of varying the direction for the heat surface from vertical to horizontal directions. Through this study, the steady and transient temperature of the heat surface at different pressures and directions were obtained. Although the temperature non-uniformity of the heat surface from the centre to the edge could reach 10℃ for the aluminium alloy due to the varying pressures, the whole temperature results successfully satisfied with the thermal control requirements for electronic equipment, and the temperature control effect of the vertically oriented direction was better than that of the horizontally oriented direction. Moreover, the behaviour of bubbles generating and detaching from the heat surface was recorded by a high-resolution camera, so as to understand the pool boiling heat transfer mechanism at low-load heat flux. These pictures showed that the bubbles departure diameter becomes larger, and departure frequency was slower at low pressure, in contrast to 1.0 atm.     

Influence of air-jet vortex generator diameter on separation region

Control of shock wave and boundary layer interaction continues to attract a lot of attention. In recent decades several methods of interaction control have been investigated. The research has mostly concerned solid (vane type) vortex generators and transpiration methods of suction and blowing. This investigation concerns interaction control using air-jets to generate streamwise vortices. The effectiveness of air-jet vortex generators in controlling separation has been proved in a previous research. The present paper focuses on the influence of the vortex generator diameter on the separation region. It presents the results of experimental investigations and provides new guidelines for the design of air-jet vortex generators to obtain more effective separation control.     

Control of transonic flow fields using local occurrence of non-equilibrium condensation

Control of supersonic flow fields with shock wave is important for some industrial fields. There are many studies for control of the supersonic flow fields using active or passive control. When non-equilibrium condensation occurs in a supersonic flow field, the flow is affected by latent heat released. Many studies for the condensation have been conducted and the characteristics have been almost clarified. Further, it was found that non-equilibrium condensation can control the flow field. In these studies, the condensation occurs across the passage of the flow field and it causes the total pressure loss in the flow field. However, local occurrence of non-equilibrium condensation in the flow field may change the characteristics of total pressure loss compared with that by the condensation across the passage of the nozzle and there are few for researches of locally occurred non-equilibrium condensation in supersonic flow field. The purpose in the present study is to clarify the effect of local occurrence of non-equilibrium condensation on the transonic flow field in a nozzle with a circular bump. As a result, local occurrence of non-equilibrium condensation reduced the shock strength and total pressure loss in the transonic flow field by flowing the moist air from trailing edge of the circular bump to the mainstream.     

3D Computation of Hydrogen-Fueled Combustion around Turbine Blade-Effect of Arrangement of Injector Holes

Recently,a number of environmental problems caused from fossil fuel combustion have been focused on.Inaddition,with the eventual depletion of fossil energy resources,hydrogen gas is expected to be an alternativeenergy resource in the near future.It is characterized by high energy per unit weight,high reaction rate,widerange of flammability and the low emission property.On the other hand,many researches have been underway inseveral countries to improve a propulsion system for an advanced aircraft.The system is required to have higherpower,lighter weight and lower emissions than existing ones.In such a future propulsion system,hydrogen gaswould be one of the promising fuels for realizing the requirements.Considering these backgrounds,our group hasproposed a new cycle concept for hydrogen-fueled aircraft propulsion system.In the present study,we perform 3dimensional computations of turbulent flow fields with hydrogen-fueled combustion around a turbine blade.Themain objective is to clarify the influence of arrangement of hydrogen injector holes.Changing the chordwise andspanwise spacings of the holes,the 3 dimensional nature of the flow and thermal fields is numerically studied.     

Investigation of modification design of the fan stage in axial compressor

The S2 flow path design method of the transonic compressor is used to design the one stage fan in order to replace the original designed blade cascade which has two-stage transonic fan rotors. In the modification design, the camber line is parameterized by a quartic polynomial curve and the thickness distribution of the blade profile is controlled by the double-thrice polynomial Therefore, the inlet flow has been pre-compressed and the location and intensity of the shock wave at supersonic area have been controlled in order to let the new blade profiles have better aerodynamic performance. The computational results show that the new single stage fan rotor increases the efficiency by two percent at the design condition and the total pressure ratio is slightly higher than that of the original design. At the same time, it also meets the mass flow rate and the geometrical size requirements for the modification design.     

Visualization Experiment and Numerical Analysis of Cavitation Flow Characteristics in Diesel Fuel Injector Control Valve with Different Structure Design

Increasing the injection pressure has been proven an effective method to enhance performance and reduce pollutant of diesel engine.With the increase of the injection pressure,the cavitation damage problem inside common rail fuel injector is more significant,which has direct influences on reliability of diesel engine.While the most studies so far have focused on cavitation occurred in injector nozzle and its atomization characteristics,few researchers studied the cavitation phenomenon in fuel injector control valve.But due to the complexity of flow field and difficulty of experiment,the cavitation in control valve could not be fully described by existing theories.In this paper,the two-dimensional visualization experiment and numerical simulation of control valve was implemented to acquire the image of cavitation intuitively and validate the simulation method and model.Then a new structure design of control valve named convergent model was presented for comparison.The origin model and convergent model with different valve lifts were simulated in three dimensions.The results showed that the sheet cavitation occurred at the surface of seal cone and steel ball then turned to cloud cavitation in downstream area.The intensity of cavitation increased with the increase of valve lift.Convergent model could efficiently reduce the cavitation intensity near the seal area.This research could provide references for engineering optimization design of control valve.     

A study on the effects of the intake port configurations on the swirl flow generated in a small D.I. diesel engine

This paper investigates the effect of intake port configuration on the swirl that is generated within a direct injec- tion （D.I.） diesel engine. The in-cylinder flow characteristics are known to have significant effects on fuel-air mixing, combustion, and emissions. To clarify how to intensify the swirl flow, a swirl control valve （SCV） and a bypass were selected as design parameters for enhancing the swirl flow. The optimal intake port shape was also chosen as a parameter needed to efficiently generate a high swirl ratio. The results revealed that a key factor in generating a high swirl ratio was to control the intake airflow direction passing through the intake valve seat. Further, the swirl intensity was influenced by changing the distance between the helical and tangential ports, and the swirl flow was changed by the presence of a bypass near the intake valve seat. Additionally, the effect of in- take port geometry on the in-cylinder flow field was investigated by using a laser sheet visualization method. The experimental results showed a correlation of swirl ratio and mass flow rate. In addition, we found that employing the bypass was an effective method to increase swirl ratio without sacrificing mass flow rate.     

Applications of Electrical Capacitance Tomography in Two Phase Flow Visualization

The successful application of Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) depends heavily on the image reconstruction speed and quality. The two requirements usually cannot be satisfied simultaneously. Also, for a large number of acquired 2D ECT images, a 3D presentation of them is much desired to track the variations of the material distribution in a third dimension. To facilitate ECT for practical flow analyses in process engineering, the authors have recently developed algorithms for 3D image presentation and for online iterative image reconstruction that only takes the same time as a linear back projection method but yields good image qualities as the Landweber iterative method does. The new methods have been successfully applied to visualize several classes of two phase flows, namely fluidization, cyclone separation, circulating rate determination in circulating fluidized beds, pneumatic conveying, rotating drum mixing. Special characteristics in each case have been discussed and valuable results are obtained, which are reported in this paper.     

Experimental Instrumentation for Measurement of Reactivity Temperature and Voiding Effects at Zero Power Research Reactors

The paper describes the instrumentation for studying temperature and void reactivity effects that were developed at VR-I zero power reactor. Further are described its operational parameters, fields and ways of its utilization as well as issues connected to its implementation into the reactor core.     

Power Delivery Studies of Windbelt Generators with Different Architectures

Windbelt generators have been proposed as small, green power sources for battery charging applications. Some of the reported results lack detailed information about how key parameters influence the output power of the generator. In this work, we built prototypes with different architectures to study the voltage generation and power delivery as functions of belt tension, length, and electrical load at various wind speeds. We also studied the maximum power delivery conditions before the breakdown of the belt oscillation occurs. Our results are obtained from windbelt generators with two types of architectures： a conventional design with an adjustable belt that uses weight for tension control, and a revised design with a belt oscillation perpendicular to the coil axis. We have concluded that the breakdown of the belt oscillation at lower output resistances is a primary bottleneck that will limit windbelt systems to only very low power applications.     

Simulation of natural gas transmission pipeline network system performance

Simulation has proven to be an effective tool for analyzing pipeline network systems （PNS） in order to determine the design and operational variables which are essential for evaluating the performance of the system. This paper discusses the use of simulation for performance analysis of transmission PNS. A simulation model was developed for determining flow and pressure variables for different configuration of PNS. The mathematical formulation for the simulation model was derived based on the principles of energy conservation, mass balance, and compressor characteristics. For the determination of the pressure and flow variables, solution procedure was developed based on iterative Newton Raphson scheme and implemented using visual C＋＋6. Evaluations of the simulation model with the existing pipeline network system showed that the model enabled to determine the operational variables with less than ten iterations. The performances of the compressor working in the pipeline network system xvhich includes energy consumption, compression ratio and discharge pressure were evaluated to meet pressure requirements ranging from 4000-5000 kPa at various speed. Results of the analyses from the simulation indicated that the model could be used for performance analysis to assist decisions regarding the design and optimal operations of transmission PNS.     

Vehicle-to-Grid Technology： State-of-the-Art and Future Scenarios

An overview of V2G （vehicle-to-grid） technology is presented in this paper, it aims to highlight the main features, opportunities and requirements of V2G. Thus, after briefly resuming the most popular charging strategies lbr PEVs （plug-in electric vehicles）, the V2G concept is introduced, especially highlighting its potentiality as a revenue opportunity ｜br PEV owners： this is mainly due to the V2G ability to provide ancillary services, such as load leveling, regulation and reserve. Such solutions have been thoroughly investigated in the literature from both the economic and technical points of view and are here reported. In addition, V2G requirements such as mobility needs, charging stations availability and appropriate PEV aggregative architectures are properly taken into account. Finally, future developments and scenarios have also been reported.     

Advance Electronic Load Controller for Micro Hydro Power Plant

Most of the MHP （micro hydro power） plants use ELC （electronic load controller） for speed control. Various types of ELC have been developed so far. A dummy ballast load is connected across each phase of generator terminals and ELC controls the power consumed by the ballast load to result in constant speed operation. The ELC developed so far uses thyristor switches in each phase to control ballast load power. The ELC senses the system frequency and comparing it with reference frequency, it generates a common value of firing angle for all three thyristor pairs of each phase. The performance of such ELC is not perfect for unbalanced consumers load connected in each phase, which overloads the generator. This paper presents an advanced type of ELC which senses frequency as well as consumer＇s load current of each phase and fires the thyristor pairs with different value of firing angles for different phases. This solves the problem of overloading of the generator with unbalanced consumer＇s load. Simutink model is developed to perform transient analysis of the proposed scheme and the prototype of hardware is also fabricated. The simulation results and experimental results are presented.